The scurrilous puppet movie “Team America: World Police” devoted a song to the directing efforts of Michael Bay, the man who made “Pearl Harbor” and “Armageddon.” “Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?” went the tender lyrics, echoing a question that many have asked in the last few years.
| Lame: Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson are denizens of an enclosed world (the Earth has been contaminated) who begin to wonder what life is like outside. Michael Bay directs, with impressive technical virtuosity, this lame idea.
Rated: PG-13 rating is for violence, subject matter. Now showing: tk |
He does keep on making movies, however, and “The Island” is Bay’s latest. It’s typical of the director’s output: overblown, nonsensical, juvenile.
It does feature a fun sci-fi premise, and for a while you wonder whether Bay might actually pull off this derivative mix of “Logan’s Run” and “Blade Runner.” He won’t.
We begin our tale inside a hermetically sealed complex that’s home to thousands of people, most of them dressed identically in white. The world outside has suffered some cataclysm that has contaminated almost everything, so survivors are stuck inside.
But the inhabitants dream of “the Island,” the world’s one uncontaminated location. A lottery selects people to move to the island whenever a spot comes up.
Meanwhile, people have their diets rigorously controlled, and intimate contact with others is forbidden. Regular announcements remind all to remain “polite, pleasant,” as they go about their drone-like tasks.
Two puzzled citizens, Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson) chafe at these restrictions. They even begin to wonder what’s outside.
So far, so good. Sure, viewers may be able to guess what’s going on long before the heroes do (especially if they’ve seen publicity for the movie, which naturally gives away all the tantalizing “surprises”), but the sets are cool and the idea of living in a super-controlling society is a useful one.
In the second half of the movie, everything changes, which gives Michael Bay a chance to indulge his usual artistic obsessions: car chases, people hanging (and falling) from buildings, and characters excitedly shouting “Go!” and “Hold on!” at regular intervals. Some of this is enjoyable in a ridiculous, summer-movie kind of way, and a lot of it is just ridiculous.
Sean Bean plays the sinister director of the controlled environment, Djimon Hounsou is a hired enforcer, and Steve Buscemi does his comic-relief thing (he did it for Bay on “Armageddon,” too) as a greasy technician who befriends Lincoln Six Echo.
The two stars are cogs in the machine in more ways than one. Johansson has been in so many indie films that it’s odd to see her given the full va-va-voom treatment, while McGregor is even blander than he was in the “Star Wars” movies. Given the film’s concept, it would have been difficult for the actors to express much personality, so some of their dullness is built into the story. But that makes it tough to sit through.
Which leaves Michael Bay to demolish buildings and fling cars and trains around. This he does with grim determination, as though to prove that nobody makes bigger action movies than Michael Bay. The man’s technical virtuosity is large indeed, but here it’s at the service of another lame idea.
Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor star in “The Island.”
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